The Lonely Fajita

by Abigail Mann

  ‘I think it’s a right good idea,’ she says after a pause, turning to look at me. ‘You haven’t got long to sort it all, but I can already picture it out there on the green. You know, I’m sure if you phoned ElderCare they’d be happy to put their name to it. They’re always going on about community involvement, but beyond the companion programme I’m not sure they do owt else.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Alina. She’s sending over some banners and said she’ll share the event on their social media. I just need to get everything else organised. There’s the kit, equipment, a PA system, the schedule …’ I say, checking things off on my fingers, ‘and I’ve got to convince people to come, somehow. Ideally, we’d get loads of exposure and then we can try and maintain interest from there. It’s got to represent everything Lovr can offer going forward. A total re-brand, like my original idea.’ I clench my teeth and look at Annie, who squeezes my elbow, her eyes crinkled like crepe paper.

  ‘We can do this, love. Just give me a job and I’ll get cracking.’

  ***

  By the end of the following week, the area around Annie’s kitchen table looks like the headquarters of a major military operation. On every surface there are stacks of receipts, brochures, posters, and cardboard boxes full of flyers that I’ve just picked up from the printers. I couldn’t figure out how to make it look any less shit – my attempt at drawing a happy older woman on the computer looked more like an appeal for sufferers of a withering disease – so instead I used a technique honed from years of covering exercise books in school, and made a collage from pages pulled out of magazines with names like Homes & Gardens and Good Old Days.

  Honestly, I think they look bloody good, all things considered. I stuff a stack in my rucksack every morning, leave an hour early, and pop into shops and businesses on the way to work to ask if they’ll stick them up in the windows. I’ve shifted 700 in five days and my step count is off the charts.

  Despite all this, my efforts at work have gone largely unnoticed, except by Rhea, who said my event sounded ‘cute’. Adam openly voiced that ‘old people have about as much selling power as Keith Chegwin in a mankini’ and Mitchell hasn’t been in since last week, meaning Bismah has been to another three or four interviews without him knowing. I’ve been keeping a meticulous record of receipts and expenses, particularly seeing as I’m almost at the end of my overdraft, but it’ll be a few weeks yet before I can claim anything back.

  Luckily, most of the ideas we’ve added to the whiteboard (we have one of those now) in ‘Lovr X Community HQ’ can go ahead with stuff I found in Evergreen’s disused clubhouse, or the bits that charities and businesses have donated along the way. Margaret convinced (or threatened) the local garden centre to donate secateurs, trowels, and cuttings for George’s rose workshop, but the laptops have been the biggest success so far. Rodney, who has been far more communicative since I discovered his secret business empire, salvaged a load of defunct tech from the store cupboard and spent a few hours tucked behind his divider changing batteries and circuit boards so that we’ve now got six computers ready for use in the ‘Silver Surfers’ internet workshop (I was worried the name was offensive, but Annie assures me that the geriatrics will find it funny and blamed my generation for taking everything too seriously).

  With just over a week to go and Mitchell still AWOL, the fair is yet to be vetoed, so I’m powering on until I’m told otherwise. My motivation has been helped by a new evening ritual, of sorts. When I walk round the green after work, a handful of Annie’s neighbours shuffle down their garden paths to ask for updates, but my responses have become so robotic that at times I convince myself that the planning really is going well, despite the incredibly tight time-frame. Other than the residents, who are the only guaranteed attendees, I have no idea if news of the fair will travel outside Evergreen’s walls.

  Along with my underlying anxiety about Richard’s arrival in a few weeks, a fresh feeling of dread has pooled somewhere beneath my belly button: the fear that no one will turn up. Before I left this morning, Annie, busy tapping out a ‘press release’ for the local paper using just her index finger, flat-out dismissed my worries. ‘What are you expecting?’ she’d said, the gold chain attached to her glasses glinting in the sun. ‘Those that’ll come are those that’ll come – no point wasting time worrying about what might not be.’ She has a point, but then again, she isn’t part of the generation who ignore calls from unknown numbers for fear of sustaining a conversation with a stranger.

  Without a running list of attendees, I’m rigid with uncertainty. The Facebook event has a handful of people ‘interested’, but that’s not enough of a guarantee for me. As a result, I’ve been pounding the pavement with my flyers, Blue Tack, and masking tape (I’ve found that you can’t rely on the phrase ‘I’ll put it in the window later’ – it’s infuriatingly non-committal – but if you provide the equipment it’s too awkward for them to refuse).

  ***

  I head up yet another hill, my thighs sore from chafing in the sticky warmth. I’d just been to a local garage (where they agreed to put a poster next to the pumps), a record store (who also agreed to loan us some speakers – result!), and was about to turn down a lane beside The Heart and Hound, when I spotted a tiny greengrocer’s that’s been closed since I moved here months ago.

  A bell pings as I open the door and from the back of the narrow shop, an older man raises a hand to acknowledge me, tucking in a fold of his shirt as he points to two unloaded fig crates. He instructs the younger man about where to display them in a deliberate, wavering Jamaican accent.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, I’m coming. The boy has let the place fall apart since I’ve been gone, but it’s okay,’ he says, inching himself up onto a stool next to the counter, ‘I’m back now.’

  ‘Hi!’ I start, ready to barrel through my spiel. ‘I’m organising a community event up at Evergreen Village this weekend and was wondering if you’d take a few of these off me to put up in the window? It’s aimed at linking members of the community across generations … a skills swap, food hall, gathering sort of thing. It’s going to be fun, I hope!’ I say, laughing a little too loudly, my go-to response to cope with the awkwardness of talking up an event I’m not sure will be any good.

  The shop owner interlocks his fingers and rests them across the top of his belly, his eyebrows knitting together as he exhales on an outward hum. ‘Anyone can come to this fair? It’s a free thing?’

  ‘Yeah. All free and open to anyone. If you just wanted to come up and have a tea and some cake, or take part in one of the workshops, it’s all good.’

  ‘Where did you say this is taking place?’

  ‘Up at the Village. Evergreen Village. Do you know it? It’s on the corner at the top of the hill with the weird neo-Gothic arches and—’

  ‘I know where it is,’ he replies with a slow nod, scratching the whiskers on his chin. ‘JJ, we still got enough left over at the end of the week for a basket?’

  ‘Yeah, reckon so,’ the younger man replies from behind a stack of green bananas.

  ‘I’ll make you a fruit basket up, for a raffle if you’re doing one of those. Is it a fair if there’s no raffle?’ he says. I smile and nod my head in agreement. Note to self: organise a raffle. He takes a stack of flyers from me and taps them on the countertop to straighten the edges, scanning the words on the page. ‘They’ve never done anything like this before. Open the place up, no? I’d remember – I’ve been here since I was twenty-three.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say, buckling the straps on my rucksack again, ‘you must have seen a lot change round here.’

  ‘Not half, not half …’ he replies, nodding at another customer who has come in behind me.

  ‘Well, thanks again for the fruit basket offer. Oh –’ I turn back around, my shoes squeaking on the polished concrete floor ‘– can I take a name to put on the list of businesses who have donated?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, put my son on there. He does all this now,’ the older man
says, motioning to the shop. ‘JJ Higgins. Honeydew Fruit & Veg.’

  I fall over thank-yous and goodbyes as I leave, and head up a shady side street thick with ivy-laden trees that line an old cobbled path. I tuck Honeydew’s business card in my back pocket. The corners jab me through the thin material of my shorts all the way home.

  Chapter 30

  A few days pass in a cushioned haze of low-key work days (we’re still missing our supreme leader) and long dinners outside with a laptop between me and Annie (we’ve spent a good few nights watching tutorials on the decidedly dry subject of ‘finance spreadsheets’, aided by Irish coffee).

  Although she’s been absent almost as long as Mitchell, sightings of Rhea have been reported around the office. At around 10 a.m. on Friday I went to the loo, and although I’ll admit to having a cheeky scroll through my phone whilst in there, by the time I returned Rhea had already left. With so few days until the fair, I’m keen to run my plans by the team, but as I think about calling Mitchell, courage fails me at the last minute and I assume he’s got bigger things to worry about. It’s not dissimilar to when I need to check my bank balance. I’d rather live with the idea that I’ve got money in my account, because the fact that I have absolutely nothing is much harder to process.

  As I cross Hoxton Square (a full thirty minutes early) I fall into step behind a woman with a hypnotically swishy ponytail and bum cheeks so peachy I’d recognise them anywhere.

  ‘Rhea! Rhea! Hi!’ I pick up my pace and catch her by the time we reach The Butcher Works. We squeeze into the revolving doors at the same time, but they’re not designed for two people simultaneously, which I quickly realise when my tote bag crushes between her knees as we shuffle the bloody thing round. She slips out into the lobby quicker than I’m prepared for.

  ‘Rhea! Can we catch up? About the fair I’m organising at the weekend? I had some ideas about a name change. What do you think about “The Festival of Love”? It’s sort of—’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve got to sort something out, so …’ She pulls out her phone, nips past the doors to our office with her head down, and trots up the stairs two at a time. Rachael looks up from behind the front desk. She shrugs and drags an emery board across her thumbnail.

  When I head through to the office, the first thing I see is Adam’s back. He and Bismah look incredibly conspiratorial, all bent heads and tight lips. Rodney is off to one side, his head angled in their direction. I drape my scarf over my yoga ball chair and join them, but they ignore me, so I demote myself and move to where Rodney stands.

  Before I can interject to ask what’s going on, the glass door swings open and bounces hard off the door stop. It wobbles noisily on its hinges, framing Mitchell, who stands before us sporting a new chinstrap of tufty facial hair.

  ‘Meeting room,’ he utters. He looks awkward and stiff, like a grubby pigeon walking around on stumps. Rodney blinks twice and we fall into a sombre funeral march behind him.

  When we get to the meeting room, Rhea is sitting with her arms neatly resting on the table. She scratches her neck and clears her throat as we sit down. Mitchell hasn’t moved from his position at the window since we came in, which might have produced an air of intrigue if the room looked out onto a glittering cityscape. Instead, our view is the boarded-up pub next door and a couple of skips that art students regularly sift through for offcuts of wood. I shuffle in my chair and notice that we all have an identical document in front of us that none of us have opened. Things must be bad if paper is back on the scene.

  ‘We’re done, kids,’ says Mitchell. Rhea looks down at her nails and picks at the polish. ‘Finished.’ Adam rubs his forehead, Bismah’s lips tighten, and Rodney blinks impassively. I experience the immediate sensation that I’ve swallowed a live toad. ‘We fought, we battled, but it wasn’t enough. By the end of the week we’re shutting up shop. The investors had me bent over a barrel and I’ve taken a right royal pounding to soften the blow for you lot.’

  ‘You’ll find details of your severance package in these documents,’ chimes in Rhea, unflustered. ‘We cease trading as of today, but payroll will run as normal at the end of the month. Except for you, Elissa. As you were expenses only, we’re compensating you up until close of play today.’

  ‘Hang on, is that right? Can you do that?’ I say, looking from Rhea to my document, which on second glance is far slimmer than the others. Fuckity, fuck, fuck! I was counting on Friday’s payment to fund a hot-water cistern for the refreshments marquee.

  ‘Oh, we have popped a £20 gift voucher in there. To say thank you,’ she adds, as I sit unable to speak.

  ‘If you don’t mind, can you sign off on the reference I’ve written myself?’ says Bismah, getting up from her chair. ‘It’s in your inbox. There’s an insurance place in Tower Bridge I’ve got a position at, and I can head over this afternoon if you want us out, like, now.’ Rhea glances up at Mitchell. He nods so slightly it could be mistaken for a twitch.

  ‘Sure, thanks, Bismah.’ She shrugs her long black cardigan up onto her shoulders and hovers by the door, raising a hand to us before she leaves. Lucky bitch.

  ‘Bismah?’ says Mitchell.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Drop your laptop off to Rachael on reception before you leave. Same for you guys,’ he says. Shit. I’ve been dependent on mine in the evenings to organise stuff for the weekend. What’s going to happen to the fair?

  ‘Just a quick one: this event I’ve organised, um, I tried to catch you earlier, Rhea, but … I’ve put a lot into it and—’

  Mitchell pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘What, in the Queen’s arsehole, are you talking about?’

  ‘The Festival of Love. The big launch event for the re-brand? I’ve just about got everything sorted for it. What’s, um, what’s going to happen with all that?’ Mitchell clutches the back of a chair with both hands and rocks like he’s about to launch off a diving board.

  ‘What do you think is going to happen, sweetheart?’

  ‘Well, that depends, I guess.’

  ‘Yes …?’

  ‘It depends on whether you want to keep your name to it. It could … it could be good PR if we frame it as a celebration of all that we’ve done so far?’

  Mitchell starts laughing so quietly it sounds more like bubbles gurgling through a water cooler, getting louder and louder until it becomes so awkward I don’t know whether to join in or start crying.

  ‘What have we done so far, eh? I won’t knock your idea, darlin’. I liked the whole philanthropic, geriatric, community bollocks. I love my nan to bits, but it’s just not sexy enough! No one wants to plug money into a social scheme. It’s a fucking drain, I’ll tell you that for free.’ I pinch the skin between my thumb and finger and count to ten in my head. I will not cry, not this time. ‘I can’t even sell off the email addresses we’ve collected because of some legal bollocks. We’re fucking broke, Elissa! You know what that means? The piggy bank’s empty.’

  ‘Rhea told me that I could claim back my expenses on stuff I’ve bought for the fair …’

  ‘Rhea?’ Mitchell hisses. ‘I can’t— I ca— You take over before I do something stupid,’ he says, interlocking his hands behind his head and turning back towards the window.

  ‘Look, Elissa. We’re going into liquidation. We still owe rent here –’ she sits back in her chair and takes a sip of coffee ‘– and Mitchell’s had to re-mortgage his flat in Farringdon. This is hard on all of us.’

  Mitchell whips back round and shoves his hands in his pockets. He tries to smile, but it dies on his mouth. ‘If you want to hold your little fair, go ahead. Sing “Que Será Será” with a bunch of decrepit bints who’ll mistake you for the daughter that never visits. Do what you want, but we’re not paying for it.’

  ***

  ‘What are you doing back? Poorly?’ says Annie, drying cutlery from the draining board. ‘Are you okay?’ I hover in the doorway and nod, trying to unknit my brows. ‘You don’t look right. Get yourself on the sofa. I’ll
make a jasmine tea.’

  I do as I’m told. In the living room, I sit on the edge of a seat cushion and lie down sideways, my boots still on the floor. What are my chances of getting a paid job when the only thing on my CV is an expenses-only position at a failed start-up? What am I going to say to Annie about the fair? And George? There’s no point to it now. Then again, was there ever a point to begin with?

  ‘Here you go. I’ve given you the Princess Margaret teacup. I know you like her.’ I nod. Annie puts the back of her hand to my forehead and frowns. ‘You’re a bit hot.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not. Stay there.’

  I look over at Annie’s TV, where Lorraine Kelly sits demurely on a luridly purple couch interviewing a man about how to spot fake suede. I don’t want to move. If I stay here, I can meld into the upholstery and I’ll never have to think about jobs, or invoices, or consumer hooks ever again. Out of my eyeline, I hear the rubber of Annie’s Velcro slippers squeak on the kitchen tiles.

  ‘Ay, what’s this about?’

  Annie’s face has dropped. Her chin sags and her eyes are tight. She holds my work laptop against her stomach and her hand shakes as she moves her finger over the mouse pad.

  ‘What?’ I sit up and am quickly familiarised with the crushing feeling that I’ve done something wrong, except this time it’s not misplaced.

  ‘I wanted to go on the NHS website, but you’d left something up and I saw … I’ve seen … What’s this about, Elissa?’ I walk over, take the laptop off her, and open the screen wider. Last night, I’d logged into my emails after we’d drawn a layout for the marquees and hadn’t closed it down before I went to bed. The last chunk of Richard’s message is on display. She’s read the whole thing.

  ‘I didn’t plan for it to come out like this. It’s good, isn’t it? It’s good. He wants to see you.’ Annie turns away from me, her hand violently shaking next to her leg. She stands by the sink, her shoulders up by her ears. Outside, the birds explode in a riot of noise as a ginger cat jumps down from the fence.